Czech Leaders Give Pledge To Nation

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31782, 12 September 1968, Page 15

Czech Leaders Give Pledge To Nation

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PRAGUE, September 11. The leader of the Slovak Communist Party (Mr Gustav Husak) has joined other Prague leaders in a pledge to the nation that Czechoslovakia will continue along its progressive path.

Mr Husak, a Deputy Premier and a Progressive, signed a proclamation read on Czechoslovak television last night and seen in Prague as a reminder to the Soviet Union to keep its side of the recent Moscow agreements. By adding his signature, the Slovak leader may have been anxious to counter the controversy he recently aroused by criticising some of the liberal policies pursued since Mr Alexander Dubcek became the Czechoslovak party leader last January. He may also have wanted to dampen criticism of his recent speeches encouraging acceptance of the Moscow agreement.

The proclamation was signed also by Mr Dubcek, the President (Mr Ludwig Svoboda), the Prime Minister (Mr Oldrich Cernik) and the President of the National Assembly (Mr Josef Smrkovsky). It urged Czechoslovaks who were caught outside the country by the Warsaw Pact invasion three weeks ago to return home, and said the immunity of the individual was guaranteed.

Observers see some significance in the fact that Mr Cernik put his signature to the document only hours after returning from political and economic talks with the Soviet party leadership. It was issued also while the Kremlin’s “trouble-shooter," the Deputy Foreign Minister (Mr Vasily Kuznetsov), was believed still to be in Czechoslovakia after his talks with President Svoboda, Mr Dubcek and Mr Cernik. Observers say the declaration was possibly an indication that Mr Kuznetsov had been pressing too hard for tougher measures against the ‘‘counter-revolutionaries” said by Moscow to be working against the return by Czechoslovakia to “normalisation.”

The proclamation said people would be punished only if they had violated State laws.

In the Communist Party newspaper, “Rude Pravo,” yesterday, a member of the Presidium, Mr Zdenek Mlynar, said that people would be punished if they violated the reimposed laws on censorship or tried to form political groups. But, he said, Prague would deal with any counterrevolutionaries in its own ways In its own courts.

The proclamation said there would never be a return to “the violations of the legal

code as in the past”—a reference to the Stalinist era with its political trials.

It contained an endorsement from all the highest bodies of the State that the process of democratisation followed since Mr Antonin Novotny was ousted as party leader in January would be continued.

The shooting of a Czechoslovak boy by Russian soldiers in Wenceslas Square yesterday has added to the tension in Prague. The police say the youth, who was heckling the Russians, was wounded in the stomach.